


hurricane by any other name

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the little girl he knew at Winterfell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hurricane by any other name

**Author's Note:**

> For the December Fic Fest fills; for [midnightblack07](http://midnightblack07.livejournal.com). The prompt was shippy, but this is basically gen, I'm sorry.

This is not the little girl he knew at Winterfell.

Jon remembers saying goodbye to that girl, Sansa Stark and nothing more, in all her Tully beauty and dreams of spring. Their relationship was less warm than with Robb or Arya or even Bran or Rickon; he knew she resented him a little, her mother’s daughter. But she’d touched his arm and her eyes looked sincere as she told him to be careful up there, on the wall, and to come back and visit when he could.

(Not that she meant it, really, she would be in King's Landing with a crown on her head, and not the iron one she wears now - at the time, she never intended to be the one waiting in Winterfell for him to come home.)

This girl – no, this _woman_ – is everything and nothing like that one. The beautiful auburn hair is redder than ever, bringing his thoughts briefly back to another woman kissed by fire, what felt like so long ago. But her eyes are clear, like they never were then. There are no images of beauty and delight clouding her vision now; they are piercing and cold as winter itself.

She calls herself Queen in the North now, their brother’s crown won back at such a steep price resting uncertainly on her brow. But she has taken another title, one of the Starks of old. She is a Queen of Winter.

There is a twinge in his heart sometimes when he thinks of it, this beautiful girl sitting a frozen throne in a charred castle, ruler of the ash and the snow. But deep down he knows that it is not the crown that has hardened her; there are many other things to thank for that, things with the name of _Lannister_ and _Tyrell_ and _Baelish_ , and to mourn for the girl who died at their hands is to mourn for the shell of a grub before it becomes a moth, because she is terrible like this, yes, but great, and somehow he is certain that the blood of the First Men runs in her, and she will conquer winter at whatever the cost.

So when she asks you to bow and swear fealty as the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, instead of as the brother of a little girl long dead, you bend the knee.


End file.
